The Aquatic Metropolis: Mapping Water and Urban Form at Viceregal Mexico City

FAIN: FT-255008-17

John F. Lopez, PhD
Regents of the University of California, Davis (Saratoga Springs, NY 12866-1698)

A book-length study about the drainage of lakes in Mexico City during the 16th and 17th centuries based on maps, city plans, paintings, diagrams, and other visual material.

The Aquatic Metropolis examines the centuries-old efforts by the Aztec and Spanish to combat catastrophic inundation in Mexico City via urban planning, water management, and environmental change. Unlike the Aztec who built a city of causeways to mitigate flooding, the Spanish undertook drainage, transforming the city from an island in 1524 to a mainland settlement by 1700. Analysis of Western and non-Western images demonstrates the differing epistemes undergirding Spanish and Aztec conceptions of nature, thus revealing the underlying objective of drainage: to dehistoricize Mexico City from its pre-Hispanic form, freeing it from the hydro-spatial practices of Aztec Tenochtitlan by eliminating its most iconic feature: water. In scrutinizing a Spanish response to flooding, this book sheds light on how a shift from causeways to drainage speaks to a new epistemological orientation to nature that had transformative urban implications.

Associated Products

Tenochtitlan in Sixteenth-Century Native Pictorials (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Tenochtitlan in Sixteenth-Century Native Pictorials
Author: John F. López
Abstract: In 1524, the German printer and book dealer, Frederick Peypus, published the Nuremberg Map and Hernán Cortés’ Second Letter under the title Praeclara Ferdinandi Cortesii de Nova Maris Oceani Hispania Narratio Sacratissio ac. Inuictissimo Carolo Romanorum Imperatori Semper Augusto. Acting as a theatrical space for historical events and Cortés’ chivalric fantasies of conquest, the map’s intended effect was to capture European sensibilities, drawing the viewer into an unimaginable world across a distant ocean, ultimately bringing the Aztec and Tenochtitlan into the European cultural imagination. Yet, the Nuremberg Map was not the only sixteenth-century image produced of Tenochtitlan for a European audience. Early modern indigenous artists also took line and color to page to offer their own interpretation about the Aztec capital. Study of indigenous pictorials not only suggest different epistemes at work from their European counterpart but equally as important, they inscribe, in picture, the underlying conceptions of Tenochtitlan, its geographic setting, and its most iconic feature: water.
Date: 05/21/2019

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